I woke up in the middle of the night, my sister’s feet in my face and Kim’s back pressing me into the wall, but that wasn’t the worst part: I desperately missed my mother.

I crawled over the sleeping forms of my friend and sister, then navigated the dark hallway until I found the living room. I hesitated, spooked by the hulking shapes of the couch and chairs, the dining room table perched on spindly legs like some overgrown, ancient insect. Did I dare cross this space, step inside the master bedroom and wake Kim’s mother?

To my relief, I didn’t have to, because just then she emerged from the shadows, tying her robe at the waist.

“I want to go home,” I told her. “I miss my mom.”

“It’s 3 a.m.,” she said.

This didn’t sound like the obstacle she imagined it to be. My need was strong. Time was irrelevant.

“I can’t sleep until I see her,” I said softly.

I was a shy kid, for the most part, and though I’d known Kim’s mother for several years, she still scared me a little bit. She was the only mother who made me do things I didn’t want to do, like try zucchini bread.

She put an arm around me and led me to the couch, switched on a light then knelt to search through a bookshelf. When she turned back to me, she was holding a photo album. She sat beside me, and together we flipped through the pages until she found a photo of my mother. I can’t recall exactly what the photo looked like – I was only 7 or 8 – but I imagine my mother looked the way she did throughout much of the 1970s: long dark hair, big sunglasses, her delicate, elfin face gazing back at me. She was so beautiful on that page, I could hardly bear it.

I remember wanting to cry, but I didn’t. Kim’s mother had been so kind to find the photo that I pretended it was enough and returned to the twin bed where I fitted myself back between the two girls, and maybe, eventually, fell asleep. I can’t remember that part either.

Sleepovers seem to be a rite of passage, at least in America. It’s a strange notion, in a way, to spend the night at another person’s house just for fun. I hadn’t really considered its oddness until I was discussing it with someone whose strict parents never allowed sleepovers or slumber parties.

When I asked why it was forbidden, she said they told her, “You have a house. Why would you sleep at someone else’s?”

For the record, she didn’t mind at all and often had cousins around, so was far from lonely. But when I deny a sleepover to one of my kids, I feel guilty. It’s been ingrained in me that it’s a childhood right.

Our culture values independence and separation from parents more than most others in the world. The idea of a sleepover is just the beginning. Later, there will be sleep-away camp, then college far from home, then kids graduate and are expected to find a job and move out as fast as possible. Most people over the age of 20 consider living with your parents shameful.

And it all begins with the sleepover.

I struggled that first night away from home, even though my little sister was with me. (Incidentally, she did just fine.) And I struggled the first nights my own kids slept at friends’ houses.

I’ve also been witness to the struggle. Several little girls spending the night with my daughter have been scooped up by mothers in their robes after midnight. At my son’s 10th-birthday slumber party, one of the boys woke me at 3 a.m., scared of burglars. I read to him for a bit and tried to distract him, until he said he was ready to return to the room of sleeping boys. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a photo of his mother on hand.

Eventually, I grew to love sleepovers, but typically had them at my own house. My daughter loves them now, too: the scary movies and 4 a.m. conversations, the whispering and laughing, the electric hush of the night. There’s a unique allure to staying up all night with friends. It bonds you more than time spent together during daylight. And a big part of this is the fear and excitement of being away from your family for an entire night. It’s a window into the future that feels temporary and safe.

I want my kids to be successful and have independent lives, as most parents do, but I’m already dreading the day they will both live somewhere else, possibly far away from me. That’s one reason, for the most part, I try to be the sleepover destination, so that my kids remain under the same roof I do for as many nights as possible.

Heather Skyler is editor of OC Family magazine and a columnist for the OC Register. She is the author of two novels, and her journalism and essays have appeared in Newsweek.com, The New York Times, The Rumpus and more. For more about her writing, visit heatherskyler.com

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